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Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting

Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, which brings together staff from tech companies with neuroscientists, Zen teachers, and others to explore living wisely in our modern age. Mashable readers can use code 'Mashable' for a discount when registering.

Tweeting is easy. Tweeting and using social media with balance and effectiveness — not so easy. Zen teachings have much to offer those of us who wish to make our time on social networks more rewarding and productive.

We all have days when we engage social media with a focus and sense of direction that enriches our work and life. We find useful content and have good communication with friends, while also attending to other tasks we need to accomplish. We have other days, however, when we lose focus, and get overwhelmed and lost on social media, and find ourselves at the end of the day usually with more stress, and wondering what we actually accomplished.

Below are the top four Zen lessons to help you get the most positivity and productivity out of your social media experience.

1. Approach With a Beginner’s Mind

“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert's, there are few.” – Zen Master Suzuki Roshi

There is nothing wrong with experts. I am sure many who claim to be are quite skilled and knowledgeable. However, the question is not only how much we know, but how much are we willing to learn from our time on social media?

The person who thinks he “knows” or is an “expert” is often less open to new learning. In the age of social media, things change so fast that what we knew about a subject yesterday may not apply to today. What matters is less about what we knew in the past, and much more about how open we are to learning today. This applies especially to social media.

Lesson: Rather than focus on what you know when engaging in social media, focus on what you can learn.

2. Give What You Want to Receive

There are countless ways that social media can help us with everything from our business to our social life. However, while there is much to gain from social media, we could also say there is much to give to social media too. From a Zen perspective, it is important to give what we wish to receive. Want to find more customers for your business on Twitter or Facebook? Help others find customers for their business. Feel like you deserve more praise online? Praise others more. Want more people responding to your tweets? Respond to their tweets more. Tired of reading meaningless tweets? Make the effort to post meaningful ones yourself.

If we approach social media focused exclusively on what we can gain or what we think we should get, we set up a division in our relationships, one that often ends up preventing us from receiving the very thing we seek. When we give what we want to receive, it changes the dynamic such that, ironically, we are more likely to get what we seek.

Lesson: Focus not only what you can gain but also what you can give.

3. Only Add Useful Content

“Do not speak unless you can improve on silence.” — Zen saying

The tools of social media give us countless ways to share content with people across the world. They do very little, however, to ensure that content is useful or purposeful. There is often the belief that to be active and effective on social media one has to post consistently, letting people know throughout the day what we are doing and thinking.

However, just as great music is in part the relationship between sound and silence, we could say that for Twitter and Facebook updates, what matters is not just the content of our posts, but also the amount of space between them. I am sure we all likely follow people on Twitter who may not tweet everyday, but when they do, we are excited to read what they post. It is the quality of their tweets that matters more than the quantity of them.

Lesson: Post not to fill empty space, but to add value.

4. See Differently

“Look out from the frameless window of a long pause. Let the images come to you rather than chasing outward after them.... If you want to see differently, you'll have to look differently.” — Ji Aoi Isshi

A key element to Zen is to focus not only what exists in the external world, but to also be attentive to the internal lens from which we view it. If a cup is filled half way with water, one person could see it as half empty, another as half full. The cup, however, is what it is.

In the same way, we can have a million followers on Twitter, then look at Ashton Kutcher who has over 4 million, and think, “I am way behind” and approach the service with the desire to “catch up.” Or we can have 20 followers, and think, “Cool, twenty people want to read my tweets,” and engage with Twitter from a positive state of mind. The number of followers we have often has little to do with the positive or negative attitude with which we approach the service. What matters is less about our number of followers, and much more about how we “see” or “look” — the mental approach we take.

Lesson: Focus more on the mental approach you take, and less on comparing yourself with others.

Conclusion

Of course we are going to use social media, but the real challenge is doing so effectively. There is an old Zen story about a man riding a horse that is galloping very quickly. Seeing him, a woman asks, “Where are you going in such a hurry?” To which the man replies, “I have no idea. Ask the horse!” There are likely days that if someone asked us what we were doing, we might reply, “I have no idea. Ask Twitter and Facebook!”

When we let the horse, or social media, direct us, we get overwhelmed and unfocused, and our time is not spent well.

Twitter and Facebook are incredible tools, but making the most of our time on them requires paying attention to the mental approach we take. When we engage them with a beginner’s mind, a desire to give, a focus on adding useful content, and a positive state of mind, we will likely have more days guiding the horse than the opposite.

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